Your Turn Blog Posts

Construction accidents are a concern in a major city like New York. When you’re dealing with steel beams, massive pipes, electrical lines, scaffolding or welding equipment tens of stories above street level, every day can present a danger.

The article, National Security, Sustainability and Citizenship, from the Solutions Journal ends with the sentence: “The concept of sustainability as a national strategic imperative for the twenty-first century can create a new path forward so that we, as a nation of citizens, can endure and thrive in our own “hour of peril and national opportunity.”

Not surprisingly, it contains no reference to the U.S. trade deficit, since the trade policies in the United States over the past four decades could not have been much further from the spirit of sustainability, if they were orchestrated by America’s enemies.

Last year, I ran for San Francisco District Supervisor in a crowded field of nine candidates and lost by 132 votes out of 35,351 votes cast. I would be less than truthful if I told you I wasn't disappointed. But my campaign experience also opened my eyes to new possibilities for organized labor to take a more active role in our democracy.

It has been five years since the irresponsible speculation of our financial sector drove the U.S. economy over a cliff. Not since the wild excesses of the 1920s resulted in the Great Depression has anything as dire resulted from the machinations of our bankers and brokers.

Recently a designer socialism seems to have taken root among corporations in this country. It is, for the lack of a better word, corporate socialism; its espoused philosophy appears to be any profit is mine but my debt is yours. Pure socialism...

I am writing this letter because of the Patriot Coal bankruptcy proceedings taking place at the federal courthouse in St. Louis, Missouri. I am writing this letter on behalf of the thousands of UMWA [Mine Workers] retirees who sacrificed their bodies to build a billion dollar company, on behalf of the thousands of UMWA retirees and their families who depend on their pensions and health care to live, on behalf of the more than 4,000 active UMWA employees at Patriot Coal whose jobs are threatened, on behalf of the coal miner spouses who wait and worry that their loved ones will not return to them due to a mining accident or disaster, on behalf of the mine workers who fought, suffered and died at the battle of Blair Mountain, and the Ludow, Colo., massacre, on behalf of the mine workers at Piston and countless other labor struggles.

The first-ever Global Labor Film Festival (GLFF) kicks off on May Day, as festivals in the United States, Australia, England, Israel, Norway and Turkey host more than a dozen screenings of labor films.

Highlighted in Nate Silver’s New York Times article, Conservatives’ Love Affair with Christie Is Over, was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie becoming the eighth Republican governor to announce that he will accept Medicaid expansion under the president’s health care law, in spite of Christie’s party’s general opposition to the law.